FIC: Fractures [2/4] (McKay/Sheppard, R)
Title: Fractures [2/4]
Author: afletcherfox
Rating: R
Pairing: Eventual McKay/Sheppard
Summary: Post Trinity. Things must be broken before they can be fixed.
Spoilers: Spoilers for Season 2, Trinity, Condemned, and The Intruder.
Disclaimer: Alas, still no luck. Perhaps I'll own them next Christmas.
Author's Notes: Huge thanks to everyone who commented on the last chapter, and here we go with the second installment! Warnings for quite a bit of Rodney whump.
Previous Chapters: 1. Solitaire
Sheppard spent the majority of the next two days steadfastly keeping away from the lab, where he was certain McKay was spending every waking hour, and then some. To occupy his time he organized a few training sessions with Teyla and Ronan, and though he noticed a subtle distance in the way they treated one another, he blamed it on apprehension. Very few people would be excited at the thought of sneaking onboard a Wraith ship. It was rather like a steer volunteering to visit the slaughterhouse, you know, just for kicks.
Major Lorne had suggested that his team accompany them, but Sheppard had quickly vetoed that idea. The last thing they needed was for more people to be at risk of exposure inside the Wraith ship. Subterfuge was the name of the game here.
Unfortunately McKay was usually pretty sucky at the subterfuge part of the deal, and Sheppard resigned himself to the fact that they would need to have at least one unpleasant conversation before leaving on the mission. He waited until after they had finished on their virus, knowing that the talk would be hard enough without McKay being stressed and on the verge of hysterics.
"You’ll follow my orders without question on this mission," he said, without preamble.
McKay, who had walked out of the lab and directly into Sheppard’s path, blinked several times, as if adjusting to the light of the hall. With one quick sweep, Sheppard noted how haggard the other man looked, as though he’d survived on nothing but snacks and coffee for the past few days.
The confusion clouded McKay’s face for several long seconds, and then the scientist shrugged. "Fine."
"You’ll keep quiet."
A flash of irritation, this time. "Fine."
"Okay then," Sheppard said, uneasily. The conversation was going better than he’d hoped; McKay was not only complying, but also keeping his answers short and courteous. Why then did he feel so disconcerted?
"Anything else, Colonel?" McKay said laconically. "Turkey sandwich?"
The words struck deep, deeper than John could have ever imagined. The last time they had shared this inside joke had been back before, on another occasion when they had stared death in the face, laughed, and narrowly snatched free from the jaws of defeat. He stared at McKay, seeing in sudden jarring detail the bloodshot eyes and the heavy bags. The other man looked more exhausted than Sheppard had ever seen him, without any of the youthful exuberance and confidence that he usually carried around him like a second skin. Perhaps he should have waited until McKay had had a chance to freshen up.
Too late now, and besides, the conversation was over.
Swallowing down a lump of an emotion he couldn’t even begin to name, Sheppard settled for a tight smile. "Just get some food and some sleep. 1200 tomorrow, Jumper Bay."
And this time it was McKay who simply walked away.
***
The following morning, as with most mornings before missions with a known high-risk, Sheppard managed to actually rouse himself when his alarm went off, as opposed to his usual ritual of slamming on the snooze for a good thirty-five minutes. He dressed quickly and was down by the Jumper Bay at 1130, completing a few checks that he didn’t entirely trust the others to perform correctly. The absolute last thing they needed on this mission was to somehow run into technical difficulties with their own ship.
By 1145, Teyla had shown up. They made meaningless small talk; when Ronan showed up at 1150, Sheppard had already forgotten everything they had discussed. Maybe it had been something about football, and how he’d missed the last Superbowl. Yeah, that sounded right.
McKay arrived around 1155, looking only moderately less haggard than the previous evening. Sheppard didn’t miss the quick look of concern that Teyla threw him, but there was nothing he could do about this. The Wraith cruiser would only be out of hyperspace for a certain period of time, and if they didn’t leave now, they missed making that timeframe.
Should’ve gone with Zelenka, he thought briefly. Then he might not feel quite as tense as he currently did.
By 1200 they were all inside the jumper, looking up at Elizabeth and the others in the control room. She was saying something, perhaps something about good luck, and then they were traveling through the Stargate.
It wasn’t that he was scared for his life, Sheppard thought, but there was something odd about this mission. Teyla was not quite Teyla, McKay was not quite McKay, and what little progress he’d made toward knowing Ronan now seemed to have gone to waste. He felt a little like he was being thrown to the sharks without any of his old, and familiar, defenses. Here in the tiny Jumper, the tension between Teyla and Ronan was now so marked and so obvious, that Sheppard was mentally kicking himself for not noticing it earlier.
They were still all silent after emerging from the Stargate, which had become quite a rarity. Sheppard glanced quickly at the time - the Wraith ship was due to arrive any minute now - and passed a hand over the back of his neck, feeling oddly vulnerable. The polite, charged silence was too much. How had he been so absorbed in his own problems with McKay that he had entirely missed the signs of whatever had happened between Teyla and Ronan? Neither was openly hostile, or even discreetly hostile, and Sheppard wished that they had been because it would have made discovering this problem all the easier, but there was none of that comfortable camaraderie either.
"So," he said finally, "Looks like humans are good at being on time, and Wraiths suck at it. Humans 1, Wraith 0."
The words fell dead on the air, the back of Sheppard’s neck tingled, and finally Ronan grunted, "Woke us up too early."
"Sorry, buddy."
Silence fell. Sheppard decided it was decisively more comfortable to let it be. Why wasn’t McKay talking, grumbling about how little sleep he’d gotten the night before, how he’d spent the past few days working his ass off for this mission, and - oh right. He’d given the order to remain silent. Which was what he’d wanted, he supposed.
He was almost, almost glad when the Wraith cruiser finally did decide to show.
***
Getting onboard the ship was the easy part of the plan. As the cruiser descended into the planet atmosphere in preparations for a lunch culling, various bays opened to enable the smaller and more nimble Wraith darts to exit. Sheppard simply waited for an appropriate moment to fly the cloaked jumper inside the bay. This feeding time was most appropriate for their mission; most of the Wraith would be concerned with satiating their appetites, and Sheppard was almost positive that most of the ship would be more undermanned than usual.
Time to begin.
"Remember we parked next to that big hole," he muttered, his hand tightening around the Wraith stunner he held. He stood on the threshold of the jumper for several seconds, scanning for any Wraith, and then dropped onto the deck of the bay. Ronan quickly followed him, then Teyla, then McKay.
Sheppard eyed the scientist warily. "Radio silence," he suddenly ordered, switching off the thing. Despite their conversation the previous night, he didn’t wholly believe that McKay wouldn’t choose a completely wrong moment to use the damn thing and give away their position. "Teyla, to my right. McKay, behind. Ronan, cover our sixes."
Ronan stared blankly at him.
"Our backs. Cover our backs," Sheppard clarified, already advancing forward. He had perused the Ancient database in great detail - really, it was astounding how much work he could accomplish when he wasn’t spending time needling McKay - and had a relatively good portion of the Wraith cruiser layout memorized. Of course, this knowledge was greatly dependent on the Wraith not changing their ship designs in the past 10,000 years, but Sheppard liked to be optimistic.
They navigated the ship in silence, Sheppard grimacing each time his foot sank into something mushy that he really didn’t want to know more about. The Wraith cruiser was both dark and dank, but for obvious reasons they weren’t using their flashlights. It was a straightforward enough design, but the ship bulkheads, if they could be called that, were so twisted and alive, almost, that it gave the sensation of being inside a dying jungle. There were no windows in the place; only occasional breaks in the bulkhead vines, where some brown and green foreign letters and symbols scrolled across a murky orange background.
The team turned several more corners, and just as they were about to turn the final one, at Sheppard’s command, they pressed themselves flat against the bulkhead just as two Wraiths cut straight across their path, right where they would have been if they had kept walking just a few seconds longer. Sheppard hardly dared to breathe, but fortunately the Wraith were oblivious to their presence and kept striding down the other corridor.
Sheppard exhaled a breath, and raised his gun again. "Bridge straight ahead," he said, his lips barely moving as he whispered. "Move fast and quietly. Take down anything that moves, is green, and wants to feed on you. Use the stunners; we need as little noise as possible. McKay - if there is a way to shut the door quickly, do it. Then get on with the plan."
He let a few seconds go by for his orders to sink in and for any questions to be raised. Receiving none, he raised his hand and then brought it down, leaping into action as he did so. The Wraith ‘door’ swished open as he approached it, and then he was inside, firing. Vaguely he heard the door closing behind them, and his mind registered McKay ducking under a massive hand-like protrusion that he supposed served as their control console. Then he was in the battle fully, taking down two Wraiths on the bridge, and ducking underneath a set of misfired stuns. Ronan was moving with the speed of an assassin, firing his stunner at two Wraiths while dispatching a third with a slash of his sword.
"Ronan, keep watch by the door," he said, as Teyla brought down the last of the Wraith guards with a well-placed stun. "Teyla, keep your eyes on these guys. Shoot any who so much as twitch. McKay - "
"I’m working as fast as humanely possible!" came the snapped response.
"Make it faster," Sheppard shot back, tossing down the Wraith stunner, and circling around the bridge with his familiar P-90 in hand. It was astonishing; even here, the Wraith didn’t have windows. He supposed those little openings in the bulkhead, with those strange symbols against that dingy orange background, served as their viewscreens.
And then the alarm went off. Shrill. High. A little like a high school fire alarm that one of Sheppard’s friends had set off once, only immensely more ominous.
"Rodney!" Sheppard shouted, his fingers tense on the trigger of his weapon. "We’re going to have company real soon."
"Annoying, shrill, sound is normally bad, I get that!" McKay fired back at him, a thin line of perspiration breaking out on his brow. He was hunched over the control panel, his fingers flying over the twisted dark green vines and little orange pools of information.
"Colonel Sheppard, we are out of time," Teyla said tightly, her head whipping back and forth from the closed door to them.
"How much longer?" Sheppard said, anxiously looking down at the panel and then back at the door.
"It’ll be done when it’s done!"
"Sheppard," Ronan said, his tone low and urgent.
With a last, pleading, look at the control panel, Sheppard spun back around and scanned the bridge for some sort of escape route. In a straight gunfight, they could not possibly hope to win. They were impossibly outnumbered. Perhaps if they waited for the opportune moment, they could somehow blitz through the Wraith with a few well-timed maneuvers, coupled with covering fire, straight down one of the weaker sides…
"Take cover, and wait for my mark. McKay, take out their communications," he rapped out, not a second too soon.
The door whooshed open, and the colonel pivoted, keeping his body between himself and McKay, who had been the only one without a means of hiding.
Wraith spilled into the room. Dozens and dozens of Wraith, all crowding the door, all armed with stunners. Sheppard assessed the situation quickly, looking for his team; Ronan and Teyla were hidden, albeit poorly, but both he and McKay were completely exposed, directly in the center of the room, and with the dubious honor of having numerous stunners trained on them.
"Put down your weapons," one of them hissed, it’s face splitting into a cruel smile.
Sheppard greeted him with a relaxed smile, one he might give if he were enjoying a beer at the beach. "It’s generally polite to say ‘hi’ first, but we’re such good friends I guess I could overlook that."
The Wraith tilted his head slightly and looked him, and his lips cracked wider, if possible. "You are the one they call Sheppard."
"Yeah, but I prefer Colonel Sheppard," he answered flippantly, adjusting his weapon surreptitiously so that it was aimed at this Wraith, "Do you have a name by any chance? I’ve met a couple of your buddies, but I guess their parents forgot to name them."
The Wraith didn’t answer.
"Okay then. You can be - Jerry. He was a great football player, Hall of Fame and everything. You look like you could be okay at football. I mean, I’m sure your tackling would stop the other team dead in their tracks, but you’d probably get a fifteen-yard penalty each time."
Silence. Then:
"Lower your weapons!" the Wraith demanded.
"Oh so we’re back to that again, huh?" Sheppard said loudly, and then "Rodney," under his breath. All the time he’d been talking, he’d observed what he desperately hoped was a second door on the other side of the bridge. If he could tell McKay to drop to the ground at the right time, then -
Just then he heard a gunshot, no, several gunshots from behind him. McKay, you idiot! Moving automatically, Sheppard opened fire as well, but only got off a few rounds before the Wraith retaliated, one of the stun arcs struck him, and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
***
"Oh fuck," were Sheppard’s first slurred words as he returned to consciousness, and Rodney quickly scrambled over to check on his condition.
"What were you dreaming about?" he said, the words spilling out from sheer relief that Sheppard wasn’t dead or comatose as he’d feared. The silliness of his words bounced back a few seconds later; there was nothing even remotely funny about this situation; if he had thought they were dead before, then they were categorically and conclusively dead now.
Sheppard stared at him for a few seconds, his gaze unfocused, and Rodney quickly waved his hand in front of the man’s face, hoping that the colonel hadn’t suffered any severe mental damage. "Uh, hello?"
"Teyla and Ronan?" Sheppard mumbled, his eyes still glazed. He blinked several times, slowly.
Inane as the thought was, Rodney hoped that those words weren’t in response to his question about what Sheppard had been dreaming about. "Another cell, I think. I hope."
Unless they were dead, which was a very, very real possibility. No, no, he shouldn’t think about that, about the aged, decaying skeletons, with bits of dried flesh, their looks of anguish - back to silly thoughts! Silly thoughts were good.
Sheppard’s features contorted and he raised his head a little, taking in their tiny prison. It was a small room, cave-like, with the walls made of the same dark and twisted vines that comprised the rest of the ship. The difference between this cave and others though, was that there were a set of barbed wire like bars at the mouth.
"I don’t know how long we’ve been here," Rodney said, hating the slight tremble that crept into his tone.
"We’ll get out," Sheppard said shortly, hauling himself painfully to the bars of the cage and running a hand over them, as if analyzing their strength. "How much of the mission have we got down?"
"Um," Rodney tried to think of something other than their perilous situation. "I installed the interface, but the virus hasn’t been loaded yet. I don’t think they should discover it though, I mean, they shouldn’t find it because well, it should be pretty well hidden."
"Should? How sure are you?"
"Sort of - " he gestured helplessly. Was that really the important part? They were currently prisoners of the Wraith!
"What about on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being absolutely sure."
A number. Of course. With Sheppard, it always had to be a number. The man was so ridiculously imprecise all other times, offering a guess of "Probably the 10th" when it was the 16th, but when it came to these missions, he wanted everything - down to the nanoseconds.
"4. Or 5. Or 3. I don’t know! The point is, we’re in a lot of trouble and it’s only getting worse!"
"McKay! How sure are you?"
"I’m the Head of Science, not a math solution book!"
Sheppard’s back tensed, and when he turned around, his eyes were narrowed and dangerous. "Why did you fire your damn gun before I gave the order?"
"I - " Rodney stumbled at this sudden turn in conversation. The events back on the bridge seemed terribly far away, almost like a dream. All he could remember was the alarm going off over his head, screaming in his ear, the tension on the bridge, the utter panic driving his fingers to move across the unfamiliar controls in desperate hope. It was a collision of sensations, all this fear and adrenaline rolled into one, and with the Wraith sneering at him through it all. "I - I had to."
"Good call," Sheppard said coolly, looking pointedly around their cell.
Rodney flushed darkly. Did Sheppard think so little of him now that he would assume he’d fired the weapon out of pure panic? Did he no longer trust him in battle? Yes, Rodney had been terrified, standing there with the Wraith breathing down his neck and death laughing at him, and two impossible tasks before him, but he had kept his senses!
"You just like to have everything, don’t you? You like to pile on impossible task after impossible task, just snap the order, and expect it all to be done like magic," he said tightly, his words fast and accusing, "You gave me two seconds to somehow hack into and disable their communications systems, a futile, not to mention impossible, job for anyone, even for me, so I shot at it! And destroyed it! Which makes one communications system that I destroyed that you didn’t!"
Sheppard flinched. His lips moved as if he were about to say something, but then he closed his mouth again.
Rodney fumed for a moment, but when his anger drained away, he found himself left strangely depleted. The two had been held captive before, and in situations just as dangerous and positively hopeless as this current one, but somehow Rodney had never felt quite so alone.
***
Sheppard brooded, a dark, angry sort of brood. He was frustrated. Embarrassed. Pissed. In short, he was feeling too many emotions all at once, at a time when he shouldn’t be thinking about that at all.
McKay was right, and I blamed him.
Yeah, but you had every reason to.
He had to stop thinking about that, and start focusing on what really mattered: the mission. The mission always came first, then his men, then himself. It was a basic maxim that had been drilled into every army, navy, and air force officer: mission, men, me. Thinking about Rodney McKay could come after, once they had escaped from this place with all the proper years of age intact.
They needed a means of escape, and quickly. Thanks partially to the ongoing culling, Sheppard was sure that the Wraith wouldn’t be in any sort of hurry to ‘feed’ on his team, but he couldn’t count on that for long. For all he knew, he and his men would be bumped to the top of the menu.
As if sensing that thought, he suddenly heard the ominous sound of footsteps. Sheppard pulled himself to his feet, noticing that McKay’s face had lost all color.
There were three Wraith, the leader in the center, and two behind. The first came to the bars of the cage, opening them effortlessly, and stared at Sheppard with an eager hunger, his eyes looking as though they were already devouring him.
Sheppard suppressed a shiver. He didn’t mind women checking him out, most of the time, but this was downright wrong on so many levels.
"Hey, what happened to Jerry?" he said casually.
The Wraith leered and pointed behind him. "That one."
Sheppard stepped quickly in the way. He could not allow McKay to be taken first. It wasn’t simply because he feared McKay might crack under the torture, but a more primitive, and far more intense need: he had to protect his men.
"Look, no hard feelings if I eliminated Jerry, but if you really think about it, it’s a great chance for you. Now you’ve got a place on the team. We can start preseason training in a month, that is, if you guys can all take a break from the soul sucking for a bit."
The Wraith’s intense gold-brown eyes snapped back to him. "Stun him," he hissed.
"NO!" Sheppard heard someone shout, and then something hit the back of his knees, hard, and he buckled to the ground, McKay on top of him. All the air burst from Sheppard’s lungs from the impact.
"No," McKay repeated, more firmly. The scientist rose and stared at the Wraith, lifting his chin defiantly. "I’ll comply."
Realization rushed back to Sheppard, crashed over his shoulders like a mountain breaking, and he pushed himself to his feet just as the Wraith seized McKay’s arms and pushed him from the cell. Sheppard growled, low in his throat, and rushed forward, only to find himself staring at the wrong end of a Wraith stunner.
"Stay where you are, Sheppard," the Wraith rasped, his eyes gleaming.
But Sheppard’s attention was on the figure just past the Wraith’s right shoulder, the figure that was rapidly being dragged from view. "McKay! Rodney!" he shouted, feeling something very tight constricting in his chest. Fuck. FUCK!
Just before he was dragged around the corner, Rodney looked back at him, his eyes wide, frightened, resigned, and Sheppard felt something like a scream burst from his throat. He threw himself on the Wraith blindly, fighting for control over the stunner.
Rodney. He needed to get to Rodney!
Something hard hit his right side, and then his world went black.
***
Rodney clamped down on all his instincts that were telling him to scream and panic and go running around in circles. They weren’t of any use; the Wraith had an iron grip on both his arms, pinning them to his sides, and the third was prodding him in the back and forcing his legs to keep moving forward. He wasn’t even sure if he could get his body to obey him at this point; his mind was in a complete panic, and all he could think about was how he was about to die. Die. As in, permanently.
His throat felt like it was closing up, and his heart like he would have a heart attack any second now, and Rodney squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remain calm, the way Colonel Sheppard was always calm in situations such as this. God, he could really, really, really use that calm right about now, but no, he had left it behind in that Wraith cell.
For Sheppard. He was doing this for Sheppard.
Somehow that thought was enough to slow his pounding heart a little, and Rodney didn’t feel quite as faint as he had a second ago.
The Wraith dragged him through several corridors and then into a large, circular room. Rodney squinted, but he couldn’t make out any of the details beyond the two concentric circles etched in the center of the room. He decided that was a bad thing. Although he wasn’t particularly keen on seeing all the horrors that awaited him, not knowing made him feel even worse.
Without ceremony, Rodney was forced down to his knees in the middle of the circle, and then the Wraith released his arms and stood back, outside the ten-foot radius of the outermost circle. He should run - Sheppard might run - but Rodney found that he couldn’t even get his arms to twitch on command. It felt like there was a disconnect between his brain neurons and body, as if sheer terror had flung up a Berlin Wall…or a Great Wall of China.
That thought made him titter slightly, because this was so his death, and he was scared.
He heard some footsteps behind him, a light tread, and then something tickled his cheek: strands of oily, red hair. Then there was a voice in his ear, soft, silky, almost like purring:
"So who are you, Rodney McKay?"
Something squeaked from his throat.
The Wraith woman straightened slightly, her fingers trailing down Rodney’s arms. He shivered at the touch, his limbs shaking without any sort of control. Then with abrupt swiftness, her relentless fingers wrapped around his left pinkie and pulled violently upward.
Piercing pain shot through him, and he grunted, gasping for air.
She loosened her grip, marginally. "You are from Eaaarth."
"No, not really," Rodney babbled, rocking back and forth on his heels. Her hands tightened around his pinkie again, and he suppressed a scream.
"You are in no position to lie."
"No - no, I figured that!"
She wrenched his pinkie backward, at a forty-five degree angle, a tormenting, vicious caress. He screamed this time, multicolored streaks exploding across his vision.
"I’m not - oh Christ - I’m not lying, I’m r - really not," Rodney stammered. Oh God. His BMD was already 1.5 standard deviations below peak bone mass, but this was really going to increase his osteoporosis risk a hundredfold! God, God, God! This was agony. Torture. He couldn’t bring himself to think about Earth, because if he did, he would surely break any second now.
She released his pinkie, and he collapsed on the ground, sobbing from tears that he had no idea how to control.
"I see," she said quietly, her face mere inches from his own. Her breath was foul on his face, putrid, cold, but he was barely aware of any of that at all. All he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and scream. "Then where are you from, Rodney McKay?"
Earth, Earth, EARTH. Anything to stop the pain!
"G - Gilligan’s Island!"
Where that had come from, he had no idea.
Her expression darkened. "Lies. We have spoken to your kind before, ones who wear your uniform," two fingers mockingly danced across his lapel, and then slipped under his chin. "But do tell me, in what galaxy can this Gilligan’s Island be found?"
"I - I - I don’t know, we’re uncharted. We never believed in triangulating, position fixing our - " Rodney said, his breath catching as her fingers tightened under his chin.
She appraised him rapaciously, yellow eyes gleaming, and then nodded at one of the guards. Rodney’s stomach lurched as one hauled him upward and held him like that, his feet reaching desperately for the floor and failing miserably.
Her hands closed around his pinkie again, and he cried out from the mere touch. Then with a cold smile, she twisted. Rodney heard a sickening crunch, and then screamed, screamed as a pain unlike anything he had ever suffered cut through him. His stomach rolled, his feet kicked out uselessly, and he was screaming.
"Nine more chances to tell me the truth, Rodney McKay," she said quietly, and her cold hands were already grasping his fourth finger. There was no slow buildup this time, just a lightning fast jerk, and he writhed. Agony. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t focus, her face, that twisted contortion of a smile, was sliding in and out of his vision.
Third crack. Another scream, and he didn’t even know he was the one who had made it. "No stop please stop wait - " the words tumbled out of his mouth, running into one another.
"Seven more chances."
"D - damn you, damn you - " he gasped for breath, his vision blackening in hot, white sparks.
Her hands tightened around his index finger and pulled backward, ever so slowly. The pressure grew, his joints screamed for mercy, all the nerves exploded in warning, and then she released the finger. Rodney sobbed out of sheer relief, staring dumbly at his left hand, his mind not even beginning to process that three of those fingers were twisted out of shape.
"Take him to the cell," the Wraith spat out. "One hour, Rodney McKay. Then we’ll talk again."
***
The walk back to the cell was not one that Rodney remembered. His feet were no longer obeying him, his mind fixated on the agony in his fingers, the sheer feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong there, and the Wraith’s promise. One hour. He had no idea how he had survived the last hour; the thought of one more was nearly enough to make him break down and sob.
All he knew was that one moment he was hanging limply between the two Wraith guards, his feet forced to do some sort of shuffling, and then he was pitching forward into a strong set of arms.
"Rodney?" he heard Sheppard hiss, the voice filled with choked emotion. "Christ. I thought you - I thought you were - "
He was vaguely aware that Sheppard was leaning him against one of the walls, and then yelped as Sheppard gently took his left hand and inspected it. "N - no, don’t," he stumbled over the words, trying to pull his hand back to the safety of near his own body.
"Ssh, it’s okay," Sheppard murmured, his other hand tightening protectively around Rodney’s shoulder, almost hard enough to bruise, as if he were afraid where Rodney might disappear to should he let go. "You idiot. You fucking idiot."
"There’s gratitude for you," Rodney mumbled, his muscles relaxing for the first time that day. He had an hour’s respite, and Sheppard no longer seemed quite as angry. Merely being in the other man’s presence again seemed to soothe his panic and confusion.
"God, Rodney," Sheppard breathed again, and Rodney suddenly felt a warm weight against his right side, as though Sheppard had taken a seat next to him. He opened his eyes slightly, and was surprised to see Sheppard looking at him intently, those hazel eyes filled with concern and a simmering darkness. Their eyes met, Rodney started to look away, but then found he couldn’t. In the gaze, he tried to convey everything he felt, how he was sorry for what had happened on Project Arcturus, how he hadn’t meant to betray Sheppard’s friendship, how he hoped this was somehow a payback, a demonstration of the friendship that he’d failed to show during Arcturus.
What came out though was: "Almost a god."
He was rewarded with one of those John Sheppard smiles, the kind that made him flush with pride and warmth, but this particular one was bittersweet. "You didn’t need to prove anything."
"They did this to me for lying, Colonel. You better break the habit."
Sheppard was silent, and then Rodney felt his body weight being shifted around so that he was leaning on the other man. He made as if to protest, but then Sheppard put his finger on his lips, and Rodney completely lost all words.
"Rest. That’s an order."
And Rodney felt like he should start complaining. He hadn’t just endured a torture session only to be treated like a child (because really, there were so many things he could be doing, like pacing around and decrying their impending doom), but there was something oddly comforting about having Sheppard’s lean, warm body pressed against his own, and Sheppard’s arm around his shoulder could almost, almost make him believe that he was safe.
Dial on...Chapter 3: Finding Waldo
Author: afletcherfox
Rating: R
Pairing: Eventual McKay/Sheppard
Summary: Post Trinity. Things must be broken before they can be fixed.
Spoilers: Spoilers for Season 2, Trinity, Condemned, and The Intruder.
Disclaimer: Alas, still no luck. Perhaps I'll own them next Christmas.
Author's Notes: Huge thanks to everyone who commented on the last chapter, and here we go with the second installment! Warnings for quite a bit of Rodney whump.
Previous Chapters: 1. Solitaire
Sheppard spent the majority of the next two days steadfastly keeping away from the lab, where he was certain McKay was spending every waking hour, and then some. To occupy his time he organized a few training sessions with Teyla and Ronan, and though he noticed a subtle distance in the way they treated one another, he blamed it on apprehension. Very few people would be excited at the thought of sneaking onboard a Wraith ship. It was rather like a steer volunteering to visit the slaughterhouse, you know, just for kicks.
Major Lorne had suggested that his team accompany them, but Sheppard had quickly vetoed that idea. The last thing they needed was for more people to be at risk of exposure inside the Wraith ship. Subterfuge was the name of the game here.
Unfortunately McKay was usually pretty sucky at the subterfuge part of the deal, and Sheppard resigned himself to the fact that they would need to have at least one unpleasant conversation before leaving on the mission. He waited until after they had finished on their virus, knowing that the talk would be hard enough without McKay being stressed and on the verge of hysterics.
"You’ll follow my orders without question on this mission," he said, without preamble.
McKay, who had walked out of the lab and directly into Sheppard’s path, blinked several times, as if adjusting to the light of the hall. With one quick sweep, Sheppard noted how haggard the other man looked, as though he’d survived on nothing but snacks and coffee for the past few days.
The confusion clouded McKay’s face for several long seconds, and then the scientist shrugged. "Fine."
"You’ll keep quiet."
A flash of irritation, this time. "Fine."
"Okay then," Sheppard said, uneasily. The conversation was going better than he’d hoped; McKay was not only complying, but also keeping his answers short and courteous. Why then did he feel so disconcerted?
"Anything else, Colonel?" McKay said laconically. "Turkey sandwich?"
The words struck deep, deeper than John could have ever imagined. The last time they had shared this inside joke had been back before, on another occasion when they had stared death in the face, laughed, and narrowly snatched free from the jaws of defeat. He stared at McKay, seeing in sudden jarring detail the bloodshot eyes and the heavy bags. The other man looked more exhausted than Sheppard had ever seen him, without any of the youthful exuberance and confidence that he usually carried around him like a second skin. Perhaps he should have waited until McKay had had a chance to freshen up.
Too late now, and besides, the conversation was over.
Swallowing down a lump of an emotion he couldn’t even begin to name, Sheppard settled for a tight smile. "Just get some food and some sleep. 1200 tomorrow, Jumper Bay."
And this time it was McKay who simply walked away.
***
The following morning, as with most mornings before missions with a known high-risk, Sheppard managed to actually rouse himself when his alarm went off, as opposed to his usual ritual of slamming on the snooze for a good thirty-five minutes. He dressed quickly and was down by the Jumper Bay at 1130, completing a few checks that he didn’t entirely trust the others to perform correctly. The absolute last thing they needed on this mission was to somehow run into technical difficulties with their own ship.
By 1145, Teyla had shown up. They made meaningless small talk; when Ronan showed up at 1150, Sheppard had already forgotten everything they had discussed. Maybe it had been something about football, and how he’d missed the last Superbowl. Yeah, that sounded right.
McKay arrived around 1155, looking only moderately less haggard than the previous evening. Sheppard didn’t miss the quick look of concern that Teyla threw him, but there was nothing he could do about this. The Wraith cruiser would only be out of hyperspace for a certain period of time, and if they didn’t leave now, they missed making that timeframe.
Should’ve gone with Zelenka, he thought briefly. Then he might not feel quite as tense as he currently did.
By 1200 they were all inside the jumper, looking up at Elizabeth and the others in the control room. She was saying something, perhaps something about good luck, and then they were traveling through the Stargate.
It wasn’t that he was scared for his life, Sheppard thought, but there was something odd about this mission. Teyla was not quite Teyla, McKay was not quite McKay, and what little progress he’d made toward knowing Ronan now seemed to have gone to waste. He felt a little like he was being thrown to the sharks without any of his old, and familiar, defenses. Here in the tiny Jumper, the tension between Teyla and Ronan was now so marked and so obvious, that Sheppard was mentally kicking himself for not noticing it earlier.
They were still all silent after emerging from the Stargate, which had become quite a rarity. Sheppard glanced quickly at the time - the Wraith ship was due to arrive any minute now - and passed a hand over the back of his neck, feeling oddly vulnerable. The polite, charged silence was too much. How had he been so absorbed in his own problems with McKay that he had entirely missed the signs of whatever had happened between Teyla and Ronan? Neither was openly hostile, or even discreetly hostile, and Sheppard wished that they had been because it would have made discovering this problem all the easier, but there was none of that comfortable camaraderie either.
"So," he said finally, "Looks like humans are good at being on time, and Wraiths suck at it. Humans 1, Wraith 0."
The words fell dead on the air, the back of Sheppard’s neck tingled, and finally Ronan grunted, "Woke us up too early."
"Sorry, buddy."
Silence fell. Sheppard decided it was decisively more comfortable to let it be. Why wasn’t McKay talking, grumbling about how little sleep he’d gotten the night before, how he’d spent the past few days working his ass off for this mission, and - oh right. He’d given the order to remain silent. Which was what he’d wanted, he supposed.
He was almost, almost glad when the Wraith cruiser finally did decide to show.
***
Getting onboard the ship was the easy part of the plan. As the cruiser descended into the planet atmosphere in preparations for a lunch culling, various bays opened to enable the smaller and more nimble Wraith darts to exit. Sheppard simply waited for an appropriate moment to fly the cloaked jumper inside the bay. This feeding time was most appropriate for their mission; most of the Wraith would be concerned with satiating their appetites, and Sheppard was almost positive that most of the ship would be more undermanned than usual.
Time to begin.
"Remember we parked next to that big hole," he muttered, his hand tightening around the Wraith stunner he held. He stood on the threshold of the jumper for several seconds, scanning for any Wraith, and then dropped onto the deck of the bay. Ronan quickly followed him, then Teyla, then McKay.
Sheppard eyed the scientist warily. "Radio silence," he suddenly ordered, switching off the thing. Despite their conversation the previous night, he didn’t wholly believe that McKay wouldn’t choose a completely wrong moment to use the damn thing and give away their position. "Teyla, to my right. McKay, behind. Ronan, cover our sixes."
Ronan stared blankly at him.
"Our backs. Cover our backs," Sheppard clarified, already advancing forward. He had perused the Ancient database in great detail - really, it was astounding how much work he could accomplish when he wasn’t spending time needling McKay - and had a relatively good portion of the Wraith cruiser layout memorized. Of course, this knowledge was greatly dependent on the Wraith not changing their ship designs in the past 10,000 years, but Sheppard liked to be optimistic.
They navigated the ship in silence, Sheppard grimacing each time his foot sank into something mushy that he really didn’t want to know more about. The Wraith cruiser was both dark and dank, but for obvious reasons they weren’t using their flashlights. It was a straightforward enough design, but the ship bulkheads, if they could be called that, were so twisted and alive, almost, that it gave the sensation of being inside a dying jungle. There were no windows in the place; only occasional breaks in the bulkhead vines, where some brown and green foreign letters and symbols scrolled across a murky orange background.
The team turned several more corners, and just as they were about to turn the final one, at Sheppard’s command, they pressed themselves flat against the bulkhead just as two Wraiths cut straight across their path, right where they would have been if they had kept walking just a few seconds longer. Sheppard hardly dared to breathe, but fortunately the Wraith were oblivious to their presence and kept striding down the other corridor.
Sheppard exhaled a breath, and raised his gun again. "Bridge straight ahead," he said, his lips barely moving as he whispered. "Move fast and quietly. Take down anything that moves, is green, and wants to feed on you. Use the stunners; we need as little noise as possible. McKay - if there is a way to shut the door quickly, do it. Then get on with the plan."
He let a few seconds go by for his orders to sink in and for any questions to be raised. Receiving none, he raised his hand and then brought it down, leaping into action as he did so. The Wraith ‘door’ swished open as he approached it, and then he was inside, firing. Vaguely he heard the door closing behind them, and his mind registered McKay ducking under a massive hand-like protrusion that he supposed served as their control console. Then he was in the battle fully, taking down two Wraiths on the bridge, and ducking underneath a set of misfired stuns. Ronan was moving with the speed of an assassin, firing his stunner at two Wraiths while dispatching a third with a slash of his sword.
"Ronan, keep watch by the door," he said, as Teyla brought down the last of the Wraith guards with a well-placed stun. "Teyla, keep your eyes on these guys. Shoot any who so much as twitch. McKay - "
"I’m working as fast as humanely possible!" came the snapped response.
"Make it faster," Sheppard shot back, tossing down the Wraith stunner, and circling around the bridge with his familiar P-90 in hand. It was astonishing; even here, the Wraith didn’t have windows. He supposed those little openings in the bulkhead, with those strange symbols against that dingy orange background, served as their viewscreens.
And then the alarm went off. Shrill. High. A little like a high school fire alarm that one of Sheppard’s friends had set off once, only immensely more ominous.
"Rodney!" Sheppard shouted, his fingers tense on the trigger of his weapon. "We’re going to have company real soon."
"Annoying, shrill, sound is normally bad, I get that!" McKay fired back at him, a thin line of perspiration breaking out on his brow. He was hunched over the control panel, his fingers flying over the twisted dark green vines and little orange pools of information.
"Colonel Sheppard, we are out of time," Teyla said tightly, her head whipping back and forth from the closed door to them.
"How much longer?" Sheppard said, anxiously looking down at the panel and then back at the door.
"It’ll be done when it’s done!"
"Sheppard," Ronan said, his tone low and urgent.
With a last, pleading, look at the control panel, Sheppard spun back around and scanned the bridge for some sort of escape route. In a straight gunfight, they could not possibly hope to win. They were impossibly outnumbered. Perhaps if they waited for the opportune moment, they could somehow blitz through the Wraith with a few well-timed maneuvers, coupled with covering fire, straight down one of the weaker sides…
"Take cover, and wait for my mark. McKay, take out their communications," he rapped out, not a second too soon.
The door whooshed open, and the colonel pivoted, keeping his body between himself and McKay, who had been the only one without a means of hiding.
Wraith spilled into the room. Dozens and dozens of Wraith, all crowding the door, all armed with stunners. Sheppard assessed the situation quickly, looking for his team; Ronan and Teyla were hidden, albeit poorly, but both he and McKay were completely exposed, directly in the center of the room, and with the dubious honor of having numerous stunners trained on them.
"Put down your weapons," one of them hissed, it’s face splitting into a cruel smile.
Sheppard greeted him with a relaxed smile, one he might give if he were enjoying a beer at the beach. "It’s generally polite to say ‘hi’ first, but we’re such good friends I guess I could overlook that."
The Wraith tilted his head slightly and looked him, and his lips cracked wider, if possible. "You are the one they call Sheppard."
"Yeah, but I prefer Colonel Sheppard," he answered flippantly, adjusting his weapon surreptitiously so that it was aimed at this Wraith, "Do you have a name by any chance? I’ve met a couple of your buddies, but I guess their parents forgot to name them."
The Wraith didn’t answer.
"Okay then. You can be - Jerry. He was a great football player, Hall of Fame and everything. You look like you could be okay at football. I mean, I’m sure your tackling would stop the other team dead in their tracks, but you’d probably get a fifteen-yard penalty each time."
Silence. Then:
"Lower your weapons!" the Wraith demanded.
"Oh so we’re back to that again, huh?" Sheppard said loudly, and then "Rodney," under his breath. All the time he’d been talking, he’d observed what he desperately hoped was a second door on the other side of the bridge. If he could tell McKay to drop to the ground at the right time, then -
Just then he heard a gunshot, no, several gunshots from behind him. McKay, you idiot! Moving automatically, Sheppard opened fire as well, but only got off a few rounds before the Wraith retaliated, one of the stun arcs struck him, and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
***
"Oh fuck," were Sheppard’s first slurred words as he returned to consciousness, and Rodney quickly scrambled over to check on his condition.
"What were you dreaming about?" he said, the words spilling out from sheer relief that Sheppard wasn’t dead or comatose as he’d feared. The silliness of his words bounced back a few seconds later; there was nothing even remotely funny about this situation; if he had thought they were dead before, then they were categorically and conclusively dead now.
Sheppard stared at him for a few seconds, his gaze unfocused, and Rodney quickly waved his hand in front of the man’s face, hoping that the colonel hadn’t suffered any severe mental damage. "Uh, hello?"
"Teyla and Ronan?" Sheppard mumbled, his eyes still glazed. He blinked several times, slowly.
Inane as the thought was, Rodney hoped that those words weren’t in response to his question about what Sheppard had been dreaming about. "Another cell, I think. I hope."
Unless they were dead, which was a very, very real possibility. No, no, he shouldn’t think about that, about the aged, decaying skeletons, with bits of dried flesh, their looks of anguish - back to silly thoughts! Silly thoughts were good.
Sheppard’s features contorted and he raised his head a little, taking in their tiny prison. It was a small room, cave-like, with the walls made of the same dark and twisted vines that comprised the rest of the ship. The difference between this cave and others though, was that there were a set of barbed wire like bars at the mouth.
"I don’t know how long we’ve been here," Rodney said, hating the slight tremble that crept into his tone.
"We’ll get out," Sheppard said shortly, hauling himself painfully to the bars of the cage and running a hand over them, as if analyzing their strength. "How much of the mission have we got down?"
"Um," Rodney tried to think of something other than their perilous situation. "I installed the interface, but the virus hasn’t been loaded yet. I don’t think they should discover it though, I mean, they shouldn’t find it because well, it should be pretty well hidden."
"Should? How sure are you?"
"Sort of - " he gestured helplessly. Was that really the important part? They were currently prisoners of the Wraith!
"What about on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being absolutely sure."
A number. Of course. With Sheppard, it always had to be a number. The man was so ridiculously imprecise all other times, offering a guess of "Probably the 10th" when it was the 16th, but when it came to these missions, he wanted everything - down to the nanoseconds.
"4. Or 5. Or 3. I don’t know! The point is, we’re in a lot of trouble and it’s only getting worse!"
"McKay! How sure are you?"
"I’m the Head of Science, not a math solution book!"
Sheppard’s back tensed, and when he turned around, his eyes were narrowed and dangerous. "Why did you fire your damn gun before I gave the order?"
"I - " Rodney stumbled at this sudden turn in conversation. The events back on the bridge seemed terribly far away, almost like a dream. All he could remember was the alarm going off over his head, screaming in his ear, the tension on the bridge, the utter panic driving his fingers to move across the unfamiliar controls in desperate hope. It was a collision of sensations, all this fear and adrenaline rolled into one, and with the Wraith sneering at him through it all. "I - I had to."
"Good call," Sheppard said coolly, looking pointedly around their cell.
Rodney flushed darkly. Did Sheppard think so little of him now that he would assume he’d fired the weapon out of pure panic? Did he no longer trust him in battle? Yes, Rodney had been terrified, standing there with the Wraith breathing down his neck and death laughing at him, and two impossible tasks before him, but he had kept his senses!
"You just like to have everything, don’t you? You like to pile on impossible task after impossible task, just snap the order, and expect it all to be done like magic," he said tightly, his words fast and accusing, "You gave me two seconds to somehow hack into and disable their communications systems, a futile, not to mention impossible, job for anyone, even for me, so I shot at it! And destroyed it! Which makes one communications system that I destroyed that you didn’t!"
Sheppard flinched. His lips moved as if he were about to say something, but then he closed his mouth again.
Rodney fumed for a moment, but when his anger drained away, he found himself left strangely depleted. The two had been held captive before, and in situations just as dangerous and positively hopeless as this current one, but somehow Rodney had never felt quite so alone.
***
Sheppard brooded, a dark, angry sort of brood. He was frustrated. Embarrassed. Pissed. In short, he was feeling too many emotions all at once, at a time when he shouldn’t be thinking about that at all.
McKay was right, and I blamed him.
Yeah, but you had every reason to.
He had to stop thinking about that, and start focusing on what really mattered: the mission. The mission always came first, then his men, then himself. It was a basic maxim that had been drilled into every army, navy, and air force officer: mission, men, me. Thinking about Rodney McKay could come after, once they had escaped from this place with all the proper years of age intact.
They needed a means of escape, and quickly. Thanks partially to the ongoing culling, Sheppard was sure that the Wraith wouldn’t be in any sort of hurry to ‘feed’ on his team, but he couldn’t count on that for long. For all he knew, he and his men would be bumped to the top of the menu.
As if sensing that thought, he suddenly heard the ominous sound of footsteps. Sheppard pulled himself to his feet, noticing that McKay’s face had lost all color.
There were three Wraith, the leader in the center, and two behind. The first came to the bars of the cage, opening them effortlessly, and stared at Sheppard with an eager hunger, his eyes looking as though they were already devouring him.
Sheppard suppressed a shiver. He didn’t mind women checking him out, most of the time, but this was downright wrong on so many levels.
"Hey, what happened to Jerry?" he said casually.
The Wraith leered and pointed behind him. "That one."
Sheppard stepped quickly in the way. He could not allow McKay to be taken first. It wasn’t simply because he feared McKay might crack under the torture, but a more primitive, and far more intense need: he had to protect his men.
"Look, no hard feelings if I eliminated Jerry, but if you really think about it, it’s a great chance for you. Now you’ve got a place on the team. We can start preseason training in a month, that is, if you guys can all take a break from the soul sucking for a bit."
The Wraith’s intense gold-brown eyes snapped back to him. "Stun him," he hissed.
"NO!" Sheppard heard someone shout, and then something hit the back of his knees, hard, and he buckled to the ground, McKay on top of him. All the air burst from Sheppard’s lungs from the impact.
"No," McKay repeated, more firmly. The scientist rose and stared at the Wraith, lifting his chin defiantly. "I’ll comply."
Realization rushed back to Sheppard, crashed over his shoulders like a mountain breaking, and he pushed himself to his feet just as the Wraith seized McKay’s arms and pushed him from the cell. Sheppard growled, low in his throat, and rushed forward, only to find himself staring at the wrong end of a Wraith stunner.
"Stay where you are, Sheppard," the Wraith rasped, his eyes gleaming.
But Sheppard’s attention was on the figure just past the Wraith’s right shoulder, the figure that was rapidly being dragged from view. "McKay! Rodney!" he shouted, feeling something very tight constricting in his chest. Fuck. FUCK!
Just before he was dragged around the corner, Rodney looked back at him, his eyes wide, frightened, resigned, and Sheppard felt something like a scream burst from his throat. He threw himself on the Wraith blindly, fighting for control over the stunner.
Rodney. He needed to get to Rodney!
Something hard hit his right side, and then his world went black.
***
Rodney clamped down on all his instincts that were telling him to scream and panic and go running around in circles. They weren’t of any use; the Wraith had an iron grip on both his arms, pinning them to his sides, and the third was prodding him in the back and forcing his legs to keep moving forward. He wasn’t even sure if he could get his body to obey him at this point; his mind was in a complete panic, and all he could think about was how he was about to die. Die. As in, permanently.
His throat felt like it was closing up, and his heart like he would have a heart attack any second now, and Rodney squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remain calm, the way Colonel Sheppard was always calm in situations such as this. God, he could really, really, really use that calm right about now, but no, he had left it behind in that Wraith cell.
For Sheppard. He was doing this for Sheppard.
Somehow that thought was enough to slow his pounding heart a little, and Rodney didn’t feel quite as faint as he had a second ago.
The Wraith dragged him through several corridors and then into a large, circular room. Rodney squinted, but he couldn’t make out any of the details beyond the two concentric circles etched in the center of the room. He decided that was a bad thing. Although he wasn’t particularly keen on seeing all the horrors that awaited him, not knowing made him feel even worse.
Without ceremony, Rodney was forced down to his knees in the middle of the circle, and then the Wraith released his arms and stood back, outside the ten-foot radius of the outermost circle. He should run - Sheppard might run - but Rodney found that he couldn’t even get his arms to twitch on command. It felt like there was a disconnect between his brain neurons and body, as if sheer terror had flung up a Berlin Wall…or a Great Wall of China.
That thought made him titter slightly, because this was so his death, and he was scared.
He heard some footsteps behind him, a light tread, and then something tickled his cheek: strands of oily, red hair. Then there was a voice in his ear, soft, silky, almost like purring:
"So who are you, Rodney McKay?"
Something squeaked from his throat.
The Wraith woman straightened slightly, her fingers trailing down Rodney’s arms. He shivered at the touch, his limbs shaking without any sort of control. Then with abrupt swiftness, her relentless fingers wrapped around his left pinkie and pulled violently upward.
Piercing pain shot through him, and he grunted, gasping for air.
She loosened her grip, marginally. "You are from Eaaarth."
"No, not really," Rodney babbled, rocking back and forth on his heels. Her hands tightened around his pinkie again, and he suppressed a scream.
"You are in no position to lie."
"No - no, I figured that!"
She wrenched his pinkie backward, at a forty-five degree angle, a tormenting, vicious caress. He screamed this time, multicolored streaks exploding across his vision.
"I’m not - oh Christ - I’m not lying, I’m r - really not," Rodney stammered. Oh God. His BMD was already 1.5 standard deviations below peak bone mass, but this was really going to increase his osteoporosis risk a hundredfold! God, God, God! This was agony. Torture. He couldn’t bring himself to think about Earth, because if he did, he would surely break any second now.
She released his pinkie, and he collapsed on the ground, sobbing from tears that he had no idea how to control.
"I see," she said quietly, her face mere inches from his own. Her breath was foul on his face, putrid, cold, but he was barely aware of any of that at all. All he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and scream. "Then where are you from, Rodney McKay?"
Earth, Earth, EARTH. Anything to stop the pain!
"G - Gilligan’s Island!"
Where that had come from, he had no idea.
Her expression darkened. "Lies. We have spoken to your kind before, ones who wear your uniform," two fingers mockingly danced across his lapel, and then slipped under his chin. "But do tell me, in what galaxy can this Gilligan’s Island be found?"
"I - I - I don’t know, we’re uncharted. We never believed in triangulating, position fixing our - " Rodney said, his breath catching as her fingers tightened under his chin.
She appraised him rapaciously, yellow eyes gleaming, and then nodded at one of the guards. Rodney’s stomach lurched as one hauled him upward and held him like that, his feet reaching desperately for the floor and failing miserably.
Her hands closed around his pinkie again, and he cried out from the mere touch. Then with a cold smile, she twisted. Rodney heard a sickening crunch, and then screamed, screamed as a pain unlike anything he had ever suffered cut through him. His stomach rolled, his feet kicked out uselessly, and he was screaming.
"Nine more chances to tell me the truth, Rodney McKay," she said quietly, and her cold hands were already grasping his fourth finger. There was no slow buildup this time, just a lightning fast jerk, and he writhed. Agony. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t focus, her face, that twisted contortion of a smile, was sliding in and out of his vision.
Third crack. Another scream, and he didn’t even know he was the one who had made it. "No stop please stop wait - " the words tumbled out of his mouth, running into one another.
"Seven more chances."
"D - damn you, damn you - " he gasped for breath, his vision blackening in hot, white sparks.
Her hands tightened around his index finger and pulled backward, ever so slowly. The pressure grew, his joints screamed for mercy, all the nerves exploded in warning, and then she released the finger. Rodney sobbed out of sheer relief, staring dumbly at his left hand, his mind not even beginning to process that three of those fingers were twisted out of shape.
"Take him to the cell," the Wraith spat out. "One hour, Rodney McKay. Then we’ll talk again."
***
The walk back to the cell was not one that Rodney remembered. His feet were no longer obeying him, his mind fixated on the agony in his fingers, the sheer feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong there, and the Wraith’s promise. One hour. He had no idea how he had survived the last hour; the thought of one more was nearly enough to make him break down and sob.
All he knew was that one moment he was hanging limply between the two Wraith guards, his feet forced to do some sort of shuffling, and then he was pitching forward into a strong set of arms.
"Rodney?" he heard Sheppard hiss, the voice filled with choked emotion. "Christ. I thought you - I thought you were - "
He was vaguely aware that Sheppard was leaning him against one of the walls, and then yelped as Sheppard gently took his left hand and inspected it. "N - no, don’t," he stumbled over the words, trying to pull his hand back to the safety of near his own body.
"Ssh, it’s okay," Sheppard murmured, his other hand tightening protectively around Rodney’s shoulder, almost hard enough to bruise, as if he were afraid where Rodney might disappear to should he let go. "You idiot. You fucking idiot."
"There’s gratitude for you," Rodney mumbled, his muscles relaxing for the first time that day. He had an hour’s respite, and Sheppard no longer seemed quite as angry. Merely being in the other man’s presence again seemed to soothe his panic and confusion.
"God, Rodney," Sheppard breathed again, and Rodney suddenly felt a warm weight against his right side, as though Sheppard had taken a seat next to him. He opened his eyes slightly, and was surprised to see Sheppard looking at him intently, those hazel eyes filled with concern and a simmering darkness. Their eyes met, Rodney started to look away, but then found he couldn’t. In the gaze, he tried to convey everything he felt, how he was sorry for what had happened on Project Arcturus, how he hadn’t meant to betray Sheppard’s friendship, how he hoped this was somehow a payback, a demonstration of the friendship that he’d failed to show during Arcturus.
What came out though was: "Almost a god."
He was rewarded with one of those John Sheppard smiles, the kind that made him flush with pride and warmth, but this particular one was bittersweet. "You didn’t need to prove anything."
"They did this to me for lying, Colonel. You better break the habit."
Sheppard was silent, and then Rodney felt his body weight being shifted around so that he was leaning on the other man. He made as if to protest, but then Sheppard put his finger on his lips, and Rodney completely lost all words.
"Rest. That’s an order."
And Rodney felt like he should start complaining. He hadn’t just endured a torture session only to be treated like a child (because really, there were so many things he could be doing, like pacing around and decrying their impending doom), but there was something oddly comforting about having Sheppard’s lean, warm body pressed against his own, and Sheppard’s arm around his shoulder could almost, almost make him believe that he was safe.
Dial on...Chapter 3: Finding Waldo